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ABSTRACT
Heidegger’s Being and Time has been criticized for its lack of moral concern toward others. I address this problem by reviewing and developing several revisionist interpretations. I call these the historicist, sympathy-oriented, and ontological approaches to the moral problem of others. First, I develop the ontological approach and propose to reinterpret being authentic as proper to our essence. Second, I use Heidegger’s idea in Being and Time that our essence lies in disclosure to suggest that we comprehend resoluteness as being proper to both world- and self-disclosure. Then I revise Heidegger’s definition of resoluteness to argue that our world-disclosure requires us to help others recover their authentic selves, and that this is what Heidegger is gesturing toward when he writes about “leaping ahead”. Third, I briefly assess the ethical implications of “leaping ahead” and conclude that it does not allow us to treat others as mere objects.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Löwith, Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen, 79–82; Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, 241; Theunissen, Der Andere, 171–83; Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, 176–80, 185–90; Levinas, Time and the Other, 93. These critiques of Heidegger’s apparent lack of moral concern fit with the usual condemnation of his cooperation with the Nazis while president at the University of Freiburg in 1933, for which he did not apologize.
2 Indeed, they have been refuted by, among others, Dallmayr, “Heidegger on Intersubjectivity,” 235–39, 244–6; Gadamer, “Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität, Subjekt und Person,” 96; McMullin, “Sharing the ‘now,’” 216–20; O’Brien, “Leaping ahead of Heidegger”.
3 It might be better to say that “the authentically understood ‘mine’ has to be always grasped from the primordially affirmative relation to others” (Helting, “Mitsein, Sorge, Fürsorge im Denken von Martin Heidegger,” 136; my translation).
4 “In the counterconcept to irresoluteness, as resoluteness as existentially understood, we do not have in mind any ontico-physical characteristic in the sense of Being-burdened with inhibitions. Even resolutions remain dependent upon the ‘they’ and its world. The understanding of this is one of the things that a resolution discloses, inasmuch as resoluteness is what first gives authentic transparency to Dasein. In resoluteness the issue for Dasein is its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which, as something thrown, can project itself only upon definite factical possibilities. Resolution does not withdraw itself from ‘actuality,’ but discovers first what is factically possible” (Heidegger, Being and Time, 345–6).
5 One might take issue with this definition. However, I think Heidegger identifies Dasein with human beings when he says, “This entity which each of us is himself … , we shall denote by the term ‘Dasein’” (Heidegger, Being and Time, 27). I agree with Carman (35), when he says that “the term ‘Dasein’ refers to any individual human being or person”. Furthermore, Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein seems to be an ontological inquiry into the essence of human beings, not least because he replaces Dasein with Mensch (“human”) in his later works.
6 Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung, 238–43.
7 Gethmann, “Heideggers Konzeption des Handelns in Sein und Zeit,” 140–76.
8 For distinction between “existentiell” and “existential,” see Heidegger, Being and Time, 33.
9 Gethmann, “Heideggers Konzeption des Handelns in Sein und Zeit,” 169–70.
10 Heidegger unambiguously affirms the neutrality of solicitude when he first introduces the term. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 158.
11 Ibid., 345. Heidegger also says: “In the existential analysis we cannot, in principle, discuss what Dasein factically resolves in any particular case”. Ibid., 434.
12 See, for instance, Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, especially the introduction and articles written by Jean-Luc Nancy and Françoise Dastur. See also McNeill, “Care for the Self,” Raffoul, “Heidegger and Ethics,” and Aurenque, Ethosdenken.
13 Raffoul and Pettigrew, “Introduction,” xiii, xv.
14 See Guignon, “Existential Ethics,” 84–6, Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 49–58, Ortega, “When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?,” 24–7 and Young, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life, 120–4. Both Ortega “When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?,” 28 and Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 59–60, address the historicist approach.
15 Heidegger, Being and Time, 435.
16 Ibid., 435.
17 Ibid., 436.
18 Ortega, “When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?,” 26.
19 Ortega, “When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?,” 28.
20 Vogel gives an illuminating critique of the historicist approach:
Historicality does not account for how we move and mediate among different contexts, heritages, communities, or how we adjudicate among conflicting interpretations of our own community’s destiny. It offers no account of the sense that all other human beings share in ‘our’ destiny and that honoring this requires listening to the perspectives of others from beyond the horizon of my or our prejudices, of suspending our projections for the sake of others who may have been excluded. (Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 69)
21 Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 49–58.
22 Heidegger, Being and Time, 436.
23 For the bibliography of scholars who have made this argument, see Ortega, “When Conscience Calls, Will Dasein Answer?” n. 38.
24 Cf. Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 69.
25 Smith, The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity, 136. See also Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 59–68.
26 Marx, Towards a Phenomenological Ethics, 50. See also Hatab, Ethics and Finitude, 137–68 and Vogel (The Fragile “We”, 93–7) for other sympathy-oriented views.
27 Ibid., 40.
28 Ibid., 51.
29 Ibid., 51.
30 Olafson, Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics, 7.
31 Ibid., 10.
32 Ibid., 61.
33 Ibid., 68–80.
34 McMullin, Time and the Shared World, 198–9.
35 Ibid., 198–9.
36 Ibid., 198.
37 In the same vein, François Raffoul (“Heidegger and Ethics,” 505f) states that “Heidegger has not written on ethics” because “he does not need ‘to add’ it on an ontology”. Douglas Kellner (“Authenticity and Heidegger’s Challenge to Ethical Theory,” 201) has pointed out that Heidegger’s statements are neither descriptive nor prescriptive.
38 Heidegger (Being and Time, 358). Emphasis added.
39 Heidegger, Being and Time, 334.
40 Heidegger, Being and Time, 67.
41 Ibid., 67.
42 Ibid., 68.
43 Ibid., 167.
44 Ibid., 167.
45 Ibid., 165.
46 “In understanding the call, Dasein lets its ownmost Self take action in itself [in sich handeln] in terms of that potentiality-for-being which it has chosen. Only so can it be answerable [verantwortlich]” (Heidegger, Being and Time, 334).
47 This definition of “authenticity” (Eigentlichkeit) fits well with the original meaning of its German word. Taylor Carmen states that “the word eigentlich is cognate with eigen, which means own, proper, peculiar. What is eigentlich, then, is what is most Dasein’s own, what is most proper or peculiar to it” (Carmen, “Authenticity,” 285).
48 Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, 291, 294; The Essence of Human Freedom, 198, 199. Daniel O. Dahlstrom claims that even here, Heidegger does not follow Kant’s moral theory but exposes his “moral philosophical naivety” (Dahlstrom, “Seinsvergessenheit oder moralphilosophische Naivität?” 167–79).
49 Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, 292; The Essence of Human Freedom, 198.
50 Ibid., 293, 199.
51 Ibid., 280, 191 and 290, 197.
52 Ibid., 296, 200. Emphasis added.
53 Ibid., 291, 197.
54 See Freeman, “Recognition Reconsidered”; McMullin, “Sharing the ‘now,’”184–230, and Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 69–102.
55 Heidegger, Being and Time, 158.
56 Ibid., 159.
57 Ibid., 344.
58 Ibid., 344. Emphasis added.
59 See Freeman, “Recognition Reconsidered”; McMullin, “Sharing the ‘now,’” 184–230, and Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 69–102.
60 All critical comments mentioned in Section 1 converge in this specific critique. In addition, Nikolas Kompridis points out that “Regrettably Heidegger chose to develop the meaning of ‘resoluteness’ one-sidedly, as an openness or receptivity a ‘call’ whose disclosed meaning should be understood independently of our relation to others” (Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure, 51).
61 Heidegger, Being and Time, 343.
62 Ibid., 343.
63 I take the word “pre-predicative” from ibid., 189.
64 One might justly claim that my expression here is somewhat embarrassing, since there are no two disclosures. Disclosure of the self is at the same time world-disclosure. Basically I agree with this claim, but still think in our conceptual analysis we can distinguish both, and then my expression should be allowed.
65 Ibid., 171.
66 Ibid., 344. Emphasis added.
67 Ibid., 374. Emphasis and parentheses added.
68 Ibid., 343.
69 I do not think that conscience involves alterity in a Levinasian way. To interpret conscience in this way does not match Heideggerian ethics. For Heidegger, conscience comes obviously from within oneself. All I need for my revision is to expand the demands of conscience so that they consider world-disclosure.
70 Cf. Paul, “The Import of Heidegger’s Philosophy.”
71 The entire passage in which this word, “co-disclose,” occurs reads: “Dasein’s resoluteness toward itself is what first makes it possible to let the Others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and to co-disclose this potentiality in the solicitude which leaps forth [ahead] and liberates” (Heidegger, Being and Time, 344).
72 Ibid., 344.
73 Ibid., 159. See also Fehér, “Vorausspringende Fürsorge–Daseinsanalytik und Daseinsanalyse,” 189.
74 I owe this insight to the comments of a reviewer and Fehér (“Vorausspringende Fürsorge–Daseinsanalytik und Daseinsanalyse. Beziehungen zwischen Heideggers hermeneutischer Phänomenologie und der Psychotherapie,” 199–200).
75 Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 90.
76 In a similar vein, Vogel, The Fragile “We”, 91, says “the authentic individual is … subject to the imperative never to treat another person solely as a means”. Likewise, Freeman (“Recognition Reconsidered,” 92) argues “in his account of solicitude, he [Heidegger] has hit upon a fundamental ethical point: the distinction between treating a human being as a human being, as opposed to treating a human being as a mere thing.” See also Freeman (“Recognition Reconsidered,” 94–5).
77 One might object that I mix up Heideggerian (or existentiell) freedom underlying “leaping ahead” and Kantian (or practical) freedom underlying imperative not to treat others just as objects or means. I totally agree that the two notions should be distinguished. I see, however, it is impossible to respect others’ freedom in a Heideggerian sense while destroying others’ freedom in a Kantian sense.